Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Voting systems

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See also: wikipedia talk:WikiProject Voting Systems/archive 1, wikipedia talk:WikiProject Voting Systems/archive 2

Contents

[edit] Example

I am really impressed with the Tennessee voting example Rob added on Condorcet's method. It's brilliant in so many ways, in providing a (visible!) rationale for the different groups of voters to have their preferences, and most importantly in providing different outcomes for different systems. I would like to transition all the single-winner systems pages away from the Andrea-Brad-Carter-Delilah examples to the Tennesee example. Are there any objections?

DanKeshet 19:46 7 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I disagree. I think the Tennessee example draws away from the essential concepts of each voting system. I think a simple Candidate A, Candidate B, and Candidate C model would better explain each individual voting system. Reading the Tennessee model for Instant-Runoff Voting I thought had too much tangential content to explain IRV to a newbie. --Leep4life 01:50, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] My work, and more examples

First, I would really like some feedback on the single-winner systems. Do you feel that the pages are better now after the work I've been doing on them? Are they accurate? Thorough? Understandable to people without a background in the subject?

Second, I want to create more examples, that, similar to the one Rob used, help demonstrate tactical voting behavior, and highlight differences between systems. It would be my preference if, like the Tennesee example, this one gave a rationale for the voters' preferences.

For the runoff pages (Instant-runoff voting and runoff voting), I would like to introduce an example like so:

41% A > B > C
20% B > A > C
10% B > C > A
29% C > B > A

In this example, there is an incentive for a few voters from A to falsely put C at the tops of their ballots, lifting C into the final runoff, where it will lose to A. Does anybody know a made-up but plausible or historical example where this could or did happen? I think the made-up examples without any reasoning really fall flat.

DanKeshet

[edit] Praise and suggestions

Slowly, but surely, I feel like this area of wikipedia has started to become very useful. I believe that it is currently the second-best all-around resource on voting systems on the web, behind the ACE Project, which is quite excellent. (And, of coure, there are tons of pages on individual systems or criteria that are much better.) Google searching finds that outside people are starting to link to Voting system as well as Duverger's Law and Condorcet's method, especially on Usenet, but also on the WWW.

So, I'd like to suggest two quick campaigns to improve the project:

  • Images! I think the Image:Sample-nz-ballot-small.jpg complements the written explanation very well. If anybody has pictures of real ballots of different kinds of elections, I think that would be a really great addition.
  • A thorough review of 142's contributions. Particularly: disapproval voting, tolerances versus preferences and the many links to these two in other articles. I have previously had these pages deleted, because I believed they were incomprehensible, though seeded with facts. (142 then rewrote them.) It's mentally grueling to be in an edit war on this alone, so I would feel much better if a few of us got together and either edited them or decided they were unworthy of editing and agreed to delete them and keep them deleted.

DanKeshet

I don't think they should be deleted. Pages with those titles should exist, and they are probably not the worst pages on wikipedia. Besides, deleting them would just be picking a fight. Rewrites would be cool, but I don't care enough about those two topics to try and help there (I'm more of a maintainer than a creator of wikipedia content, coming up with lots of new words in a row is hard work). I agree about the exessive inbound links, and have moved or removed a couple of them.

pm67nz

Images! You are so right, Dan. I hope it doesn't break local laws to take pictures of ballot papers! :) I'll see what I can find.

Regards 142 - I'll take a look at the two articles you mention for starters, certainly. If I recall, they're biased, but just about better than nothing at all - so hopefully we can tweak rather than delete. Martin 18:23, 25 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Hi Dan -- Sorry for taking so long to respond. I agree fully with pm67nz. As long as the excessive inbound links get curbed, this seems fine. -- RobLa 08:02, 28 Oct 2003 (UTC)

[edit] Complexities

Articles about voting systems should also mention their time and space complexities. -- Dissident 03:22, 11 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I added some basic computational complexity information to the Smith criterion and Schwartz set articles. CRGreathouse 02:25, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] My vision

Let me make my vision clear here: I want to produce occasional WikiReaders out of all these articles using the wiki-to-pdf script. It would open with Voting system, then move on to the criteria and theory, the systems themselves, the theorists, the electoral reform organizations, et cetera. In all, it would probably be about 50 pages printed. We could distribute it to voting reform groups, and they could adapt it for their purposes. For example, I could imagine an "electoral reform" caucus within a political party distribute a selected set of articles to convention delegates as a way of informing them of their options when it comes time to vote on a platform or on a reform proposal. Alternately, these could empower smaller electoral reform groups (small town reformers, say) to have correct, NPOV information on the different systems to distribute. Cool? DanKeshet 06:26, Apr 23, 2004 (UTC)

Nevermind, the image and table parts of wiki2pdf aren't working yet. When they are, it should facilitate easy creations of such a reader. DanKeshet 19:43, Apr 24, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Adjustment suggestion

As you are more familiar with voting pages structure, I suggest you take look and merge/move/list those pages where it is appopriate: Vote Simple Majority Voting Qualified Majority Voting --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 17:36, 12 Jun 2004 (UTC)

[edit] At-large voting

While adding an article on City Commission government, I noticed that at-large is a red link. I've been trying to figure out if this is already described in an article somewhere or, if not, which article would be most appropriate to include this in. Any suggestions? (cross-posted to Wikipedia:Reference desk#At-large voting). older≠wiser 19:27, Jan 13, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] A cool example

Here is an example election which elects different winners by different methods using the same data. I found it on the Center for Range Voting puzzle page, where it is listed as "Warren Smith's improvement of one found by a high school teacher named (Brother) Patrick Carney." Perhaps we should use it somewhere.

#voters Their Vote
5 A>D>F>E>C>B
4 B>E>F>D>C>A
3 C>B>E>D>F>A
2 D>C>F>A>E>B
1 E>C>F>D>B>A
  • A wins plurality,
  • B wins plurality plus top-2 runoff,
  • C wins sequential runoff (IRV),
  • D wins Borda count,
  • E wins Condorcet,
  • F wins Approval (assuming the top-three candidates are "approved" by each voter).

(posted by Scott Ritchie)

[edit] Articles for the Wikipedia 1.0 project

Hi, I'm a member of the Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team, which is looking to identify quality articles in Wikipedia for future publication on CD or paper. We recently began assessing using these criteria, and we are looking for A-Class and good B-Class articles, with no POV or copyright problems. Can you recommend any suitable articles on voting systems? I know of Single Transferable Vote and Voting system as FAs, are there others? Please post your suggestions here. Cheers, Walkerma 04:13, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Well, certainly those two are worthy of inclusion on paper. I'll begin looking for others, and tagging them with {{ga}} Scott Ritchie 07:58, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] IRV

Just a quick punt for Instant Runoff Voting. A lot of work has been done to this article since it was first listed here in the "articles which are a real mess" section, and I think it is now in its final stages. A few more man-hours work and we should have a featured article on our hands, so any support or contributions would be very helpful. Happy-melon 10:24, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Referendums in New Zealand

Hi. Currently the NZ collab of the fortnight is Referendums in New Zealand. Any body care to have a look at it and see if they can add anything? Cheers --Midnighttonight 08:09, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Talk:Additional Member System

Can people have a look at Talk:Additional Member System? --Midnighttonight 00:06, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Single Transferable Vote

Single Transferable Vote is up for a featured article review. Detailed concerns may be found here. Please leave your comments and help us address and maintain this article's featured quality. Sandy 22:36, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Project directory

Hello. The WikiProject Council has recently updated the Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory. This new directory includes a variety of categories and subcategories which will, with luck, potentially draw new members to the projects who are interested in those specific subjects. Please review the directory and make any changes to the entries for your project that you see fit. There is also a directory of portals, at User:B2T2/Portal, listing all the existing portals. Feel free to add any of them to the portals or comments section of your entries in the directory. The three columns regarding assessment, peer review, and collaboration are included in the directory for both the use of the projects themselves and for that of others. Having such departments will allow a project to more quickly and easily identify its most important articles and its articles in greatest need of improvement. If you have not already done so, please consider whether your project would benefit from having departments which deal in these matters. It is my hope that all the changes to the directory can be finished by the first of next month. Please feel free to make any changes you see fit to the entries for your project before then. If you should have any questions regarding this matter, please do not hesitate to contact me. Thank you. B2T2 22:09, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Stablepedia

Beginning cross-post.

See Wikipedia talk:Version 1.0 Editorial Team#Stablepedia. If you wish to comment, please comment there. ★MESSEDROCKER★ 03:27, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

End cross-post. Please do not comment more in this section.

[edit] Wikipedia Day Awards

Hello, all. It was initially my hope to try to have this done as part of Esperanza's proposal for an appreciation week to end on Wikipedia Day, January 15. However, several people have once again proposed the entirety of Esperanza for deletion, so that might not work. It was the intention of the Appreciation Week proposal to set aside a given time when the various individuals who have made significant, valuable contributions to the encyclopedia would be recognized and honored. I believe that, with some effort, this could still be done. My proposal is to, with luck, try to organize the various WikiProjects and other entities of wikipedia to take part in a larger celebrartion of its contributors to take place in January, probably beginning January 15, 2007. I have created yet another new subpage for myself (a weakness of mine, I'm afraid) at User talk:Badbilltucker/Appreciation Week where I would greatly appreciate any indications from the members of this project as to whether and how they might be willing and/or able to assist in recognizing the contributions of our editors. Thank you for your attention. Badbilltucker 23:20, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Ballot options

Hi there! the page on none of the above is bit of a mess and I've suggested splitting the RON section. Various institutions use options on ballots such as NOTA, RON, ABSTAIN and treat them in different ways. should we have separate articles for such options, or should we have a nice unified page about these types of "candidates" on ballots, and a discussion on their effect in the major voting systems? Spuddy345 03:27, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

I think a unified article is best, since explaining the differences between them is arguably the most important part. 03:48, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Voting system\Electoral system

Is there a particular reason that this article uses "Voting system" versus "Electoral system?" In my experience, the term Electoral system seems more fitting and much more common. Even the template uses the term "electoral." --Electiontechnology 06:07, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Oddly, my experience is exactly opposite yours: I can't recall ever hearing the term "electoral system" but I frequently read and hear the term "voting system". Is there any strong reason to prefer one over status quo? CRGreathouse (t | c) 16:24, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Really? Check out the Voting system entry the template is called "Commonly used Electoral systems." "Election Methods" is also fairly common. It seems to me Electoral System is the status quo. --Electiontechnology 19:16, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

I trust you if you say it's frequently used on Wikipedia. I meant that when I read about the subject (which isn't on Wikipedia, of course) I frequently see the term "voting system". In fact I would say it's the second most common term for the broad field after the less-similar term "social choice theory". "Electoral system" is so uncommon for me it sounds strange to my ears. CRGreathouse (t | c) 01:08, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

I didn't mean to imply I only meant on Wikipedia, I was just trying to give the most relevant example. In my experience the term "voting system" is much more likely to refer to the system used to cast, record, and tabulate votes. Anyone else care to chime in? --Electiontechnology 03:54, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

I do research in electronic voting, and we consistently use the term voting system to refer to the mechanisms that produce, handle, mark, collect, and count ballots. "Voting" also has this meaning in the term electronic voting. On the other side of the issue, the Citizens' Assemblies in British Columbia and Ontario consistently use the terms electoral reform and electoral system to refer to the method of converting votes into elected representatives. Finally, if we allow "voting system" to mean "translating votes into seats", then there is no other term but "voting system" to mean "casting and counting votes" as well — confusingly, both would then be called "voting systems". The only way to distinguish the two is to name them "electoral systems" and "voting systems" respectively. For all these reasons, i support the renaming of the current Voting system page to Electoral system. --Ka-Ping Yee 06:15, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

In the UK "voting method" usually refers to the "mechanics" of voting: eg at a polling station (polling place in Scotland) or by post (absent voting), by paper and pencil or by electronic machine or by telephone or by text on mobile (cellular) phone; "voting system" usually refers to the way votes are cast and counted: eg first-past-the-post (plurality), multi-member FPTP, closed party list, single transferable vote, MMP (= AMS), supplementary vote (top-two IRV). All of these "voting methods" and all of these "voting systems" are in use in the UK. "Electoral system" would encompass both "voting method" and "voting system". "Electoral reform" (as in "Electoral Reform Society") covers both "voting method" and "voting system", but much more emphasis has been and is given to reform of voting systems because the "system" has much more dramatic effects on represention than the "method".

[edit] Announcement of the state-by-state electoral reform series

Here is a to-do list:

[edit] Restoration of voting system criteria?

See Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Favorite_betrayal_criterion - I was not paying attention when this occurred but I think at the very least, summability criterion should be restored. I was having a discussion on summability in IRV talk and had to point to Electowiki. It's a new idea but is well-defined and clearly of some importance. - McCart42 16:32, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

It's interesting but WP:OR. I would be interested in explaining in the articles the minimum information needed to convey the votes, which is related to the summability criterion (which says, or tries to say, that for a fixed but arbitrarily large number of voters the information needed to convey the total vote is polynomial in the number of candidates).
For example, plurality voting takes lgn information from each voter and aggregates to \mathcal{O}(n\lg v) total information. Of course it could also be conveyed as vlgn if there were a huge number of candidates, just by relaying individual ballots.
IRV takes \lg n!=\mathcal{O}(n\lg n) information from each voter and aggregates it to \mathcal{O}(nv\lg n) in total. (In theory it could also do this in \mathcal{O}(n!\lg v), but this requires many voters and few candidates to be viable. For 15 candidates there would have to be over 800 billion voters for this to make sense -- and then only on a 'national' level, not a precinct level.)
We can use information theory, just like complexity theory, without recourse to obscure criteria.
CRGreathouse (t | c) 17:53, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
  • This is a good explanation of the quantities involved. However, I do feel that there are distinct classes of voting systems which can be represented; I'm just surprised that this idea of classification of systems by summability hasn't been published as a paper by any political scientists or mathematicians. You're exactly right - it's OR and, at least for the time being, doesn't fit in an encyclopedia. I do hope that it becomes published soon, as it is a vital thing to think about in terms of verification/security. - McCart42 23:06, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
Perhaps it has been. If you can find any citations you might be able to make new versions of the articles that were deleted (perhaps under new names). I'll keep my eyes open, in any case. I'm not sure how much goot it would be to find citations in pure math though -- there's plenty of use of big O notation in math, and I can't imagine mathematicians would feel it necessary or useful to put that into categories of the voting system sort. Of course I could be surprised... CRGreathouse (t | c) 01:51, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
  • Added this to requested articles. Electowiki has a good article on this which is derived almost directly from the old Wikipedia version of the page [1], and it is a very important criteria of voting systems. It was deleted by an IRV supporter with a short period of deliberation which took many people by surprise. Multiple articles were deleted in this way for notability concerns/OR. Articles like this shouldn't slip between the cracks just because the criterion is too obvious to be published in a peer-reviewed journal; we might be waiting a long time for that information to appear somewhere else other than the web. The information on summability is easily verifiable and should be presented. - McCart42 (talk) 23:10, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Visualizations of voting methods: a proposal to add to all relevant articles

I have found multiple independent sources for the visualizations mentioned earlier, and while they are self-published they are very important to this issue. Ka-Ping Yee has participated in a published study for the state of California on electronic voting machines and has some authority on this topic - however, in this case the simulations are so basic that anyone can verify the results themselves; I would encourage both authors to publish their sources if they haven't.

It is time we started to include these valuable resources in the articles on voting methods so that readers can understand the real-world consequences of each system. - McCart42 (talk) 03:52, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

I agree that these images are valuable and would be clearly relevant to articles on voting systems; however, the problem is that they are, at this point, close to original research. It's true what MCCart42 says, anyone can verify them, but an ordinary reader cannot necessarily verify them simply, and possible controversial assumptions involved in their creation could result in the images creating a POV imbalance. This is a general problem faced by voting systems articles, and by articles in any field which has evolved rapidly on-line, where authors don't bother to go for peer-reviewed publication.
We can fix this, I suggest. There are resources that could be used to generate something quite equivalent to peer-review, and, if this were formalized, articles could be published in a fixed and citable form based on the results of the review. Indeed, the peer review could be far broader and far deeper than often takes place in present print publications. There are three tools now available that could be used in this; something new would need to be created in addition.
(1) electorama.com, the election methods wiki.
(2) the election methods mailing list.
(3) the Election Methods Interest Group.
(4) A "journal" that publishes articles.
The journal would have its own editorial board -- or even just an editor -- who uses open standards to determine that an article is approved; these standards should be as good or better than the common standards already considered adequate to meet WP:RS reliable sourcing The journal could have a print version (perhaps print-on-demand, but, hey, if enough people want it mailed to them....), but all articles would be available on-line, probably as .pdf or in other common form.
The place to start, I suggest, is EMIG, the election methods interest group, because this is designed to have a consensus-measuring mechanism. Note that EMIG will *not* take any controversial position, an EMIG poll does not bind anyone, it merely reports the degree of consensus that a proposition enjoys. EMIG uses, I expect (I founded it but do *not* control it; I propose, but consensus disposes) standard deliberative process as modified for on-line use; but delegable proxy allows some distinction between vocal individiuals and those who actually represent a broader constituency, i.e., are trusted. Further, it would be possible to build some mechanism for recognizing expertise.
Even before what would constitute formal article publication, specific questions could be directed to the election methods mailing list, as an example, and then a report on the results generated through EMIG. Currently, I've seen what are uncontroversial facts among students of election methods have a lot of trouble being represented in Wikipedia articles because, perhaps, there is no formally published, peer-reviewed source. However, peer reviewed publication, in the traditional sense, is not crucial for Wikipedia; what is crucial is verifiability.
As the matter stands, if a particular alleged fact is posted to the election methods list, and no cogent criticism of it appears, and the fact is supported by multiple correspondents, especially including known experts, the fact is ipso facto verified as expert opinion, because of the breadth of those who read that list and write for it. But this is still not usable, not quite yet, because there is no reliable "source" for the judgement described.
At one point I was discussing, frequently, the philosophy, history, and implications of the work of an author who published mostly in German, which I don't read. There was a controversial author who made claims about what was in that voluminous work. I was participating in mailing lists which included followers of this author, and serious critics of his work and sometimes of him personally. I found that I could consider charges against this author verified if a claim was made about him, quoting his writing specifically, discussed specifically, and nobody with access to the primary sources appeared claiming that he had been misquoted. (*Always* these charges would be denied, but often with ad hominem argument that the critic was a fanatic, writing in bad faith, etc. I.e., without evidence as to the actual claimed source.) This did *not* mean that implications from the alleged fact were true, those are judgements. It meant that the source was quoted and translated with reasonable accuracy. Note also that sometimes a counterclaim would, indeed, be made, with charges that the translation was slanted. I'm talking about situations where nothing like that appeared, where the implications were serious, where, therefore, it could be expected that knowledgeable defenders of the author would correct errors.
It's the same thing with, say, Yee diagrams. If we can document that these diagrams have been studied and reviewed, such that errors or incorporated bias would have been detected, we will have created a reliable source. There is nothing unencyclopedic about this: traditional encyclopedias consult experts; all we would be doing is formalizing an *open* process so that *decisions* can be made. By whom? By anyone who decides to publish based on those decisions. Any journal is vulnerable to a claim that it has an editorial bias; but if we do our work carefully, that claim would be without foundation, and could be dismissed easily.
I intend to, as I can, start making proposals on EMIG toward this end. My own activity is sporadic, it is the nature of my life and the conditions under which I work. This will really take off when others start to initiate EMIG projects as well.
--Abd (talk) 19:56, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] WikiProject Parliamentary Procedure has been formed

I just wanted to let everyone know about the formation of WikiProject Parliamentary Procedure. We hope to cover all the major motions and parliamentary procedure terms. There will probably be a certain amount of overlap with Wikipedia:WikiProject Voting systems and Wikipedia:WikiProject Elections and Referenda. As mentioned at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Parliamentary_Procedure#Voting_methods, voting-related topics are being classified under the headings of:

There is a bit of overlap between voting system and voting basis, of course. Obuibo Mbstpo (talk) 19:42, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] request for votes: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Instant-runoff voting controversies (2nd nomination)

I would like to request that an anybody who is an expert on the subject please review Instant-runoff voting controversies for compliance with WP:NPOV and then post their comments (on whether it is NPOV, or is a POV fork) to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Instant-runoff voting controversies (2nd nomination). 69.140.152.55 (talk) 06:51, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes, that would be appreciated. The subject article was started as a way for detail on the arguments being made about IRV to be explored; the claim (and real problem) with the main article was that finding NPOV was running into conflict with a desire of some to keep the article brief. And brief presentation of arguments, *designed* to be effective when brief, is POV imbalanced. (In fact, the very name "instant runoff voting" is exactly that, an implication that it is like runoff voting when the resemblance breaks down in practice.) In a controversies article, we believed -- this was a consensus of editors that created this article, and it's been edited and supported by both IRV proponents and opponents -- we could explore the topic in sufficient detail. That article has not perfectly realized the vision, and there is stuff in there that doesn't belong, and missing sources for statements that can be puzzling to those unfamiliar with election systems, but these are normal editorial problems and nobody is maintaining the article as either a hit piece on IRV or promotional fluff. --Abd (talk) 18:43, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Asset voting

The article, Asset voting is being considered for deletion. Comments may be made at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Asset voting. --Abd (talk) 00:10, 29 May 2008 (UTC)